Interpretive Summary: While soft drinks, fruit drinks and fruitades consumption have increased over the past years, milk consumption has decreased. This paper evaluates the nutrient quality of the diets of teenaged females with different beverage consumption patterns. Females 12 to 19 years of age, who had complete food intake records on the first day of the USDA's 1994-1996 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals were included in the study. This study found that milk drinkers had higher intakes of many micronutrients than non-milk drinkers. Also, higher percentages of milk drinkers met their nutrient requirements than the non-milk drinkers. This study also found that the percentages of teenaged females drinking milk decreased and that of teenaged females drinking soft drinks increased with an increase in age from 12 years to 19 years. It is essential that females in their adolescent years get nutrients essential for growth and for bone health. Studies by other researchers have shown that in the early childhoo years, children have good quality diets, and the quality of their diets declines as they grow older. It is important to develop good food habits early in the childhood years, and maintain good food habits through adolescent and adulthood years. Nutrition education programs designed to target parents and childcare givers would help build better dietary habits in the early childhood years and maintain them through the adolescent and adulthood years. Creating public awareness on the protective role of calcium against osteoporosis and increasing public knowledge of good dietary sources of calcium could help improve bone health and reduce the cost of treating osteoporosis. This information is useful to dieticians, parents, childcare givers, and nutrition educators.

Technical Abstract:
USDA's 1994-1996 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals was used for the study. Female 12 to 19 years of age, with complete food intake records on the day of the survey were selected for the study. They were divided into four groups based on their milk and soft drink consumption status: Group 1 drank both milk and soft drinks, Group 2 drank milk but did dnot drink soft drinks, Group 3 drank soft drinks and did not drink milk, and Group 4 drank neither milk nor soft drinks. Day-one full sample weights were used in the analyses to represent the population under study. Mean food group-, nutrient-, and energy intakes, and nutrient intakes per 1000 kilocalories of the four groups were compared using Sudaan software (release 7.5.6, 2000, Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, NC) so as to include survey design effects in mean comparisons. Six linear contrast, pair-wise mean comparisons were made. Two means were considered different at a probability level less than 0.05. SAS software package (release 8.1, 1999-2000, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC) was used to compute all the other estimations. The analysis included 732 teenaged females (teens). There were 220, 172, 240, and 100 teens in groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively. On a given day, 62 percent of teenaged females drank soda, and about half the teens drank milk. Teens who had no milk or soda, had a lower energy intake than the other groups. There was no difference among all the four groups in the percent energy contribution form total fat. Overall, milk drinkers had higher intakes of many micronutrients than non- milk drinkers. The means intakes of most micronutrients were less than 80 percent of the 1989 Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) for non-milk drinkers.